CVE-2005-3143 in WebStar
Summary
by MITRE
Unspecified vulnerability in the Mailbox Server for 4D WebStar before 5.3.5 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via IMAP clients on Mac OS X 10.4 Mail 2.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 07/12/2018
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2005-3143 represents a critical denial of service flaw within the Mailbox Server component of 4D WebStar software prior to version 5.3.5. This issue specifically affects the IMAP server implementation that operates on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger with Mail 2 client applications. The vulnerability manifests when IMAP clients attempt to establish connections or perform operations against the affected mail server, leading to unexpected system crashes and complete service unavailability. The unspecified nature of the vulnerability indicates that the underlying technical flaw was not fully disclosed in the initial reporting, though it clearly involves a failure in the server's handling of IMAP protocol communications.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability occurs through carefully crafted IMAP client requests that trigger memory corruption or resource exhaustion conditions within the 4D WebStar Mailbox Server. When the server processes malformed or specially constructed IMAP commands from the client, it fails to properly validate input parameters or handle exceptional conditions, resulting in stack corruption or heap overflow conditions. This type of vulnerability aligns with CWE-125, which describes out-of-bounds read conditions, and CWE-787, which covers out-of-bounds write vulnerabilities. The flaw essentially represents a failure in input validation and error handling mechanisms that are fundamental to secure server-side application design.
From an operational perspective, this vulnerability presents significant risk to organizations relying on 4D WebStar for email services, particularly those using Mac OS X 10.4 Mail 2 clients. The denial of service condition completely disrupts email accessibility for affected users, potentially causing business disruption and productivity loss. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability with minimal technical expertise, making it particularly dangerous in environments where email services are critical for business operations. The impact extends beyond simple service interruption as the server crash may result in loss of email data or require manual intervention to restore service functionality. This vulnerability falls under the ATT&CK technique T1499.004, which describes network denial of service attacks, and represents a classic example of how protocol-level flaws can be exploited to compromise availability.
Organizations should immediately implement mitigation strategies including patching to 4D WebStar version 5.3.5 or later, which contains the necessary fixes for this vulnerability. Network segmentation and access controls should be implemented to limit exposure of the affected mail server to untrusted networks. Additionally, monitoring should be deployed to detect unusual patterns of IMAP connection attempts that may indicate exploitation attempts. System administrators should also consider implementing intrusion detection systems that can identify malformed IMAP traffic patterns. The vulnerability demonstrates the importance of maintaining current software versions and the critical need for proper input validation in server applications. Regular security assessments and vulnerability scanning should be conducted to identify similar issues in other server applications that may be susceptible to similar exploitation techniques.